Man EXPOSES The Harsh Reality Of Divorce
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
165.9114
Summary
In this episode, I speak to a woman who was falsely accused of fraud and defrauded by her ex-husband. She talks about how she was taken advantage of and how she managed to get her money back.
Transcript
00:00:02.920
But it is, it is. Well, it's both, it's, you know, it's...
00:00:08.000
But it was female enough, and so when they caught wind that you were getting domestic abuse allegations,
00:00:14.100
they needed you out because you were too much of a liability?
00:00:18.280
That, I don't know. I believe there's a potential with that.
00:00:22.140
I do believe I was then also an easy target to say, you really need this job, don't you?
00:00:35.160
Knowing that I was then, I was in need of a job at the time because I needed it for the court.
00:00:42.100
So overnight, they took 30% from my salary, which was about $13,500 a year.
00:00:50.460
And created a policy just for me, so a fraudulent policy to make it look legitimate.
00:01:10.000
Okay, so it's like, for the U.S. people, that's like three, roughly like $340 or $330.
00:01:22.960
It's normally, it's not, it's about double, not quite, it's just not quite double, but under double, isn't it?
00:01:31.200
Now, here's the thing as well, is that after my second court hearing in 2018,
00:01:36.080
she also defrauded me to the Child Maintenance Service, which that child maintenance service is child support.
00:01:42.280
And they're an organisation, it's a government-run organisation, who calculate child support.
00:01:51.640
Now, you don't have to go down that route, or you can.
00:01:55.480
So my ex just did everything possible to go down every possible formal route and make things as difficult as possible.
00:02:03.340
So, she made out, I had two jobs at £40,000 a year, which was not true.
00:02:11.180
And for six months, because of that, I had to pay £1,500 a month in Child Maintenance.
00:02:23.300
And also, at that time as well, our mortgage was coming out of its fixed rate.
00:02:32.820
And she refused to, because clearly, I said, well, clearly this divorce isn't going to go over overnight.
00:02:43.260
So, we need to, because both our names were on the mortgage, I was paying the mortgage.
00:02:47.880
We need to sign into something to save me some money here.
00:02:51.660
And she refused that for another six months as well, around the same time.
00:02:54.660
So I was paying £200 a month extra on my mortgage, plus £1,500 Child Maintenance.
00:03:04.280
So I paid, effectively, three months worth, or three years worth of Child Maintenance in six months.
00:03:09.940
And she also put me £5,000 in debt, retrospectively.
00:03:15.420
And it took me six months to evidence that to the Child Maintenance Service.
00:03:18.540
Because every time I said, right, here's the evidence to prove I don't have two jobs.
00:03:26.860
And then they recalculate it all over again, and every time the recalculation...
00:03:29.260
And did you get paid back for the £5,000, or no?
00:03:48.720
Did you ever get paid back for the £1,500 a month?
00:03:52.240
They said, because I paid it, although it was evidentially...
00:03:58.640
They told me if I don't pay it, they'll take my passport away, and I go to prison.
00:04:08.720
And they even said to me, if we want to, and this is Child Maintenance Service, they
00:04:11.200
said to me, if we want to, we can take 40% of your salary if we want to.
00:04:18.700
I said, but I've already proven to you time and time again.
00:04:28.860
Because this is around the time you and your girlfriend are together.
00:04:44.680
Eventually, they agreed with me, Child Maintenance Service.
00:04:47.920
Um, then she started to tell people that I still owed her £5,000.
00:04:55.400
I found out, uh, friends she, um, uh, recruited.
00:05:11.800
And then we obviously get information on me and pass it on to Lucy.
00:05:19.840
Um, I also had a friend who I thought she was a friend.
00:05:24.520
And she was passing information on to Lucy as well.
00:05:33.200
Uh, what, what potentially will I be doing in court?
00:05:52.280
I was declared bankrupt on the 5th of October, 2020.
00:05:55.980
Because I physically, I'd spent 30 grand in the courts.
00:06:01.940
How much, how much did everything cost you, would you say, roughly?
00:06:06.760
Was that include the £1,500 a month in child support?
00:06:11.500
And the, no, you said the 5 grand got written off.
00:06:19.160
Because I did, I did, I had to do a summary in my, in my divorce.
00:06:22.980
I can't remember if that was part of the figure or not.
00:06:25.720
It might have been what I paid, actually, yeah.
00:06:28.060
And were, at this point, you were making £40,000 a year.
00:06:31.920
Well, by this point, because I'd been defrauded, my salary got taken down from £38,000 a year to £25,000.
00:06:59.420
And how long did you see him every other week till?
00:07:05.200
Yeah, I do have, so I'm no longer doing it at a contact centre.
00:07:11.540
And then she collects them from my place on a Sunday.
00:07:13.880
There was a time when, at the point of the two-year marker, where she knew I sold my car,
00:07:25.220
she suddenly said, right, we're going to change everything.
00:07:32.720
But give me this great offer to make it look, make it look like such an amazing deal.
00:07:37.820
You pick him up on a Friday at two o'clock in the afternoon.
00:07:42.040
Have all your weekend, this and that and the other, to make it look like the best deal possible.
00:07:49.780
If I did it by train to get to work, because although it was, it's a place called Busage,
00:07:53.800
which is a place called Stroud, and it's like a little village that's not on the main, you know, nearby,
00:08:03.460
So that's two hours for me, and then two hours for my son on the way back, and vice versa on the Sunday.
00:08:07.040
And the time, so I eventually said, well, I can't do the Monday, because he won't get to the nursery on time.
00:08:15.660
No one's in the nursery by half past eight in the morning, which is going to be impossible.
00:08:21.040
So it was a Sunday, and if I took him back on the Sunday, I'd have no way of getting back,
00:08:27.260
because all the buses would be stopping, all the trains would be stopping, there would literally be nothing to go.
00:08:34.700
So it looked on everyone else, what a great deal, but she knew it was just, it was just emotional.
00:08:41.600
Did any of your friends and family start to see what she was doing?
00:08:47.240
It took a while, because it's always, well, why is she saying this then?
00:08:54.320
I found myself having to be fielding a lot of stuff and having to be a mind reader on things.
00:08:59.420
It wasn't until, probably, beginning of 2020, that they started to really see what was going on.
00:09:16.480
Because she tried to block me seeing him during the COVID lockdowns.
00:09:24.380
She said, well, you can have Ernie for these times, but you have to, I'm only going to go halfway,
00:09:32.620
which was a place called Sirencester, which she can't get to, and then she's got a car,
00:09:41.820
So she was then starting to try and, over time, if you look at it,
00:09:49.480
over that first, well, two years to three years, there was very small, incremental changes.
00:09:56.980
That would be enough to get away with at the time, but then add up to quite big changes,
00:10:22.340
Yeah, but then we can definitely see each other.